Bonus Heroes—Does This Feature Belong In Dota?

Bonus heroes is a controversial feature, especially in ranked games. It is decent as a system that replaced true random heroes in competitive matchmaking, but no one really knows why it was in the game in the first place.

Two free mangoes is one extra regeneration and 250 extra mana on demand at the start of the game. It means two extra Shadow Word uses, almost three extra Arcane Bolts and many more other things. In a meta where laning stage is extremely important, it is easy to see how it can be seen as a very unfair advantage.

Arguing against the fact that it is unfair is futile: extra spells, extra regeneration, potential “free money” that can be spent on other items—all of these things are not accounted for in game’s balance. However unfair does not necessarily mean it is without merits.

We’ve gathered winrate statistics for heroes on their “bonus days” and compared it to their regular performance and some of our findings were quite interesting and we are excited to share them with you.

A game of countless choices

One of the interesting things we’ve concluded from gathering all these stats is that heroes rarely benefit from their bonus days and even when they do, it is by a very small amount.

Most heroes lose winrate on their bonus day, as a result of many players randoming a hero they are unfamiliar with or because it simply doesn’t fit their team’s lineup. It’s hard to win a game of Dota when the person you’ve saved the last pick for, expecting him to pick a mid core, decides to random and gets Crystal Maiden.

Only about 10% of heroes actually benefit from starting the game with two extra mangoes and most of them don’t gain more than 0.2% winrate. Two mangoes is an advantage, it is unfair, but in a game of Dota, where players make countless choices, the outcome of the match is much less dependant on a hero having 250 extra mana, compared to hero fitting the lineup and being played adequately.

For the most part this winrate increase is both statistically insignificant and probably comes from when the bonus hero is a good fit for the lineup and is being played by someone familiar with hero’s spells and general playstyle.

One of the possible conclusions drawn from this probably goes against community’s preconceptions: bonus mangos don’t really have much impact on the outcome of the game and one would rarely lose because the enemy had this objectively unfair, but nonetheless miniscule advantage. Perhaps potential for higher hero variety in our pubs is worth it?

Hard to learn, harder to master

There is a second side to the coin, however. Players might overestimate how much of an advantage the enemy gets from a couple of extra mangos, but they are certainly on point with their frustration when it comes to their teammates pressing the most unnecessary, tilt-inducing button in the game—”random hero”, or picking something they are completely unfamiliar with just because they are a bonus hero.

As mentioned previously, most heroes lose winrate on their bonus day, but the scale of it was larger than we expected. Seven heroes in the game lose more than 2% winrate, despite starting the game with two extra mangoes. Of these, three are actually at 50%+ winrate across all skill brackets and are game-winning picks when played adequately.

Worth the effort?

Lycan, Lone Druid and Arc Warden are all rather complicated heroes to play and involve heavy micro to be effective. Their skill floor is already very high and their skill ceiling is probably not reached consistently even in professional matches. These heroes lose ~2.8%, ~2.5% and ~3.0% winrate on their bonus days. They also generally lose more games than they win, even on normal days, sometimes to the extreme.

Three other heroes: Meepo, Broodmother and Visage are all game-winning heroes on normal days. When played by players dedicated to mastering micro, they can be decently effective. They also lose much harder when played by novices or players starting to learn them.

Meepo and Broodmother both lose around 4.8% winrate on their bonus day, but Visage takes the cake as the most experience-dependant hero in the game with a whopping ~5.8% winrate loss.

What we are trying to say is that maybe players really shouldn’t experiment and try out new things in ranked games. There are some very complicated heroes in the game that require months of practice before they can be played consistently on an adequate level and in reality, they are rarely worth the effort if your goal is to gain MMR and climb the ranks. Only learn these heroes in unranked and only if you actually enjoy them. Visage is the exception, with a very high winrate when played properly—something to consider when choosing a difficult “signature” hero to master.

This is also important for newer players. Getting bombarded with information and losing every single game is a very frustrating experience so if you are introducing someone to Dota, definitely don’t suggest the most experience-dependant heroes in the game: Visage, Broodmother, Meepo, Earth Spirit, Arc Warden, Lycan, Lone Druid, Oracle, Batrider, Elder Titan, Enchantress, Dark Willow, Tinker, Treant Protector and Ember Spirit are the 15 most complicated heroes in the game, based on their relative performance. Or they would be, if not for a couple of interesting outliers.

There are always exceptions

One interesting thing we found is that two of some of the most complicated heroes in the game, at least according to community, are surprisingly absent from this list. There is no denying that both Invoker and Io both require a lot of practice to be played effectively, they have a very high skill floor and skill ceiling, yet, they aren’t on the list.

In case of Invoker the explanation is actually quite simple: the hero is already played so much that his bonus day doesn’t lead to a significant increase in pick rate. The hero is in quarter of all of our games every single day, frequently played by players who aren’t dedicated to mastering all his spells and their timely usage and because of it, it really doesn’t show when there is a sudden influx of unskilled players.

The interesting thing about it is that despite all that, hero actually wins more than 50% of his games in 5k+ bracket. Believe us when we tell you that being a 5k+ player doesn’t automatically mean you can play every hero in the game at an adequate level and Invoker is extremely specific and experience-dependent. With that in mind, 50%+ winrate for an objectively complicated hero that experiences “bonus hero syndrome” every single day is actually very impressive. Hopefully we will see more of him at the International, than throughout the year.

Io is a little different. Perhaps the problem is his already extremely low winrate in pubs—in certain games impact of an individual player truly doesn’t matter and there is a baseline winrate for all heroes, for when they are simply being carried by four other members of their team.

Unlike Lone Druid, who is also an extremely unsuccessful hero in pubs, Io can’t also actively be a detriment to his team by feeding Spirit Bear over and over. Players rarely do things to intentionally ruin their game, so feeding a Spirit Bear unintentionally is very different to bringing your teammate to the enemy fountain with Relocate.

Closing thoughts

Looking at the whole “bonus hero” system with an open mind allowed us to see some of the benefits it provides. It gives Valve interesting stats to work with and perhaps incorporate in their balance decision making. It slightly diversifies the pub meta and the bonuses it provides to the players are insignificant enough to create a noticeable unfair advantage.

The problem mainly lies in how the community uses this system and we’ve tried our best to explain why randoming heroes is a very bad idea and how certain heroes do require a lot of practice, that won’t necessarily pay off in terms of MMR. We also inadvertently created a list of Dota’s most complicated heroes, potentially helping newer players refine their hero choices during their first several months. Hopefully, all of this was as interesting for you to read, as it was for us to write and maybe we will see less randoms in our pubs if people will understand how much good drafting and proper piloting affects their chances of winning.

A lot of this article basically says 'we ran the numbers and it isn't as bad as you think' then only provides a few examples. I'd like to see some visual representation of the data, namely heroes that see an increase in winrate would be most appreciated

Dark Willow among the 15 most difficult heroes to play? I don't think I can agree with that, I'd rather add Puck to the list.

I spam the former, so I guess I'm biased, but still, she's not the only hero I think that looks iffy in or out of that list, but I'd like to see you elaborate more on what you mean by relative performance.

the problem is the very notion of randoming...why is that there in ranked games? keep it in normal that's fine but in ranked? isn't valve supposed to be combating toxic behavior? randoming is toxic to it's core

there's one more feature ive got beef with it's those bans...in ranked games I'm fine with it but normal games are supposed to be used for practice and learning....if a random guy bans the hero you want to pick and learn the point of you playing that game becomes void, can't even abandon you'll be risking lp, so it's just fucked up right now

remove randoming from ranked and remove bans feature from normal...im talking about all pick mode as that's the only one i play

Batrider and Elder Titan are pretty easy hero (to be played well however is very frustating but at least their skill are pretty straight forward). Dark willow also still pretty new so her skill set just need an adjustment.
Chen are a lot harder, morph also underestimated, brew require good micro, rubick player sometimes use their skill irresponsibbly, and nature prophet player are a bunch of treant feeder

It's not a question of if it's overpowered in the laning stage, IT IS overpowered and shouldn't be in ranked to begin with. If one of your best heroes happens be on the random hero pool for that day then you're going to have a massive advantage vs your opponent who most likely isn't playing one of the random heroes. A free 140 gold or in the case of randoming also, a free 190 gold is a stupid mechanic that shouldn't be in ranked.

I don't get the argument that it's unfair in ranked. If anything, it can hurt your own team's draft more than the extra consumables help. If you really think that it's broken maybe you should have some balls and decide to random yourself.

I would assume that the heroes that benefit the most from two mangoes are probably those that need the extra regen the most and can use the burst of mana due to their low mana regen rate -- probably offlaners like Centaur, Slardar and Doom ... would be nice if the article had included those that gain the most winrate on bonus days.

It is certainly an advantage, as the article states, but it also states how players tend to overvalue it which leads to losses. It would be nice if there were some data on how a player fares on a bonus hero that is their 'main' to address your second point, but I would assume that the increase in winrate would be fairly small. 2% or something like that probably.

Your third point that it is free gold is a bit off base though. There is a difference between having two mangoes and having the cost of them added to your pocket. If I were playing Ogre I would certainly use that money to buy mangoes, but if I were Drow I would likely keep the money for an extra wraith band or start on my boots or something like that. With that in mind, the value of the mangoes cannot be said to be equal to their cost for every hero.

Still, I am of the mindset that the game should strive to maintain as level of a playing field as possible for everyone. Banning heroes helps level that field (I know that is controversial to say), but bonus heroes do not. In fact, I'd see the removal of river runes as they currently stand, and make them all bounty runes.

Personally I found out that mangoes are very important for laning stage and I have started buying them anyway. I would prefer no advantage at all in ranked games. Leave all these bonuses for normal games or delete them forever. Make dota more and more dependant on skill and reduce "luck" component to minimum. Captains draft (without this stupid bonuses) in solo matchmaking isnt playable..

If you don't understand why and how anyone has to "learn" a hero, consider just the pure fact that there are 110 heroes in dota with different damage, armor, hp, mana, stat gains, turn rate, base regen, movement speed, attack animations, base attack time. Also there is question of item and skill builds on hero, spells usage, and much much more.
And now I actually feel dumb answering such an obvious question...

Yeah and the basics - movement/last hits/denies are nearly more important than all that combined. That's one of my smurfs.
I've coached matrice and more recently RvP -- every range/CD/manacost/damage/reductions/mechanics/types of damage are things I know by heart.

They're just waaaaaaay less important than the rest. The basics don't really change from hero to hero and few spells, despite having different effects, are really that different in how you use them. WK/Ogre/Sven/Vengeful etc all have a targeted stun -- Lion/Nyx etc impale -- Lesh/Lina -- Dp/Magnus/Lina/DK have similar mechanics.
They're originally all variants of the same spells in the Wc3 engine with different visual animations.
Basically same same but different.

At one point if you can't switch from X to Y hero and be successful there's an issue. There's no real new mechanics under the sun.
It's like those 2k MMR 5000 games people... They have issues with their hand/eye & for some... brain coordination.

It's not about the randoming aspect as much, you still get the bonus mangoes when you just deliberately pick a bonus hero. I'd like to see that aspect gone ideally, or at least heavily nerfed. Randoming is dumb, but at least it is a risk to balance out the reward. Choosing a bonus hero (of which there are 10, and some of them will be good) requires no investment.

probably too late for anyone to read but the data would be much more useful on bonus heroes if they only looked at the change in winrate for the hero when played by players with above 50 games on the hero, aka people who dont blow cock. saying "bonus hero is ok cause people who are bad pick hero and then they lose" isnt addressing the actual problem which is that good players pick it and get a big advantage in lane which can be even game winning

Support from Plus members keep Dotabuff running and help enable us to deliver new features for everyone. As a reward, some features that are difficult or expensive to operate are available only to Plus members. Additionally, Plus members never see any advertisements!